[rescue] Need Build Help - electricity costs

[pakenned-list at pobox.com]

> Meanwhile in San Jose, I looked at my latest bill from PG&E...

When I was growing up in the land of PG&E, they introduced
(experimentally at first) on and off peak power.  My parents really
pushed us kids to try to run things on off-peak power (mainly the
clothes dryer).   It was significant enough savings that we just fell
into the pattern of waiting until after 18:00 to run the drier.

I've not looked at this, but I would wager that the states (generally)
with the higher density of population have the larger (generally)
electricity rates.  With lower population density, you can pollute a bit
more, and it's easier to route power lines.  With higher population
density, _all_ the problems snowball.  This is an interesting story of a
power cable repair that sort of demonstrates the level of engineering
we're talking abou here (and this is from 1989!):

    http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/

Of course, if you have stuff on all the time, then you probably getting
killed with on-peak power usage.  (My dad said "two fridges and 57
clocks"--we seemed to have an electric clocks everywhere you looked).

Anyway, perhaps someone can actually do the research and point out
whether I'm right or wrong (generally) about population density.  I know
that Oregon has lots of hydro power, so they may be an exception.

Cheers,
Paul